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Net neutrality

“Neutrality” has been taken for granted in the telephone network for so long that almost no one expects their phone company to muck about with call quality or delay calls coming from rival operators. And the outright blocking of certain numbers is almost unthinkable. But the old “common carrier” rules that applied to analog phone networks have proved contentious when variations have been considered for the Internet.

In 2005, however, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had the necessary authority to make sure that Internet access services were “operated in a neutral manner.” What this meant in practice was always a bit vague—network neutrality has always been a slippery concept to pin down with exactness—but the general outline was clear. The FCC adopted four broad principles:

Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

All these principles still allowed for “reasonable network management," a contentious standard which has never been defined.

This “Internet Policy Statement" (PDF) really was just a statement; its principles were not enforceable. But it did a serviceable job for several years, making a broadly clear to Internet providers what was expected of them. Then came the Comcast imbroglio, in which the cable operator was found to be blocking certain BitTorrent connections whether the intended purpose of those connections was legal or not and whether Comcast's network was congested or not. After much wrangling, the FCC issued a landmark decision censuring Comcast for its actions.

But there was a hitch. Remember that “Internet Policy Statement” and how it wasn't a set of actual rules? So did Comcast, which eventually sued the FCC and won, gutting some of the FCC's Internet authority in the process.

So the FCC decided to pass some actual rules, which it managed to do after a 3-2 vote in December 2010. The final rules were weak—for instance, they wholly exempted wireless broadband—but by this point any rules at all were a bridge too far for ISPs. Even Google, once a key champion of net neutrality, had backed down significantly on its demands. The FCC was soon sued again, and the issue is still tied up in court.